Terrestrial and Celestial Globes Volume 2 / Their History and Construction Including a Consideration of their Value as Aids in the Study of Geography and Astronomy

by Edward Luther Stevenson

[42] Drake, Sir F. The World Encompassed, with introduction by Vaux, W. S. W. (In: Hakluyt Society Publications. London, 1854. First Series, 16.)

[43] Stevenson and Fischer. World Map of Jodocus Hondius. The evolution of a knowledge of the Great Lakes region and its cartographical representation should prove to be a topic of absorbing interest.

[44] Brown, A. The Genesis of the United States. Boston and New York, 1891. Vol. I, p. 229.

Historians of this period in American history, with scarcely an exception, have taken it for granted that the expression “from sea to sea” means from the Atlantic to the Pacific, apparently not stopping to inquire as to the geographical notions entertained at the time of the granting of the Charter concerning the regions in question. The interpretation here offered takes into consideration the fact that Jodocus Hondius, perhaps the most distinguished geographer and map maker of his day, was much in favor in England at the time of the formation of the London Company and was much consulted concerning the geography of the New World. What he thought of the Virginia region to the “west and northwest” he has laid down in his large world map. It seems all but proven that the statement “from sea to sea west and northwest” means from the Atlantic to the great but indefinite inland sea “Mare Septentrionale Americae.”

To interpret this expression as meaning from the Atlantic to the Pacific shows the historian, as Freeman has stated it, “in bondage to the modern map.” Here is a striking illustration of the importance attaching to the study of historical geography, and to its subordinate branch, historical cartography. Blaeu, Plancius, Greuter, and others, if not so clear and emphatic in their presentation of this region, evidently entertained practically the same geographical notion as Hondius.

[45] Fiorini, op. cit., p. 257.

[46] Letter to the author signed and dated, D. Fana, 28/1/1914.

[47] Founded in the year 1602.

[48] Jameson, J. F. Willem Usselinx, Founder of the Dutch and Swedish West India Companies. New York, 1887.

[49] Wieder, F. C. De Wereldkaart van Petrus Plancius in het Colegio del Corpus Cristi te Valencia. (In: Tijdschrift van het Nederlandsch Aardrijkskundig Genootschap. Leiden, 1915. pp. 301-318.)